Marx, Chinese Marxism and poverty

ABSTRACT

The People’s Republic of China links Marxism to overcoming poverty. Different kinds of poverty include economic and non-economic or developmental forms. China seems to be or at least mainly concerned with economic poverty that, until the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, was widespread but rapidly receding. Marx is especially concerned with non-economic developmental poverty, the inability to go beyond meeting basic reproductive needs to develop as an individual human being. I argue that the Chinese effort to meet basic reproductive needs is directed towards overcoming poverty arising within capitalism, hence it fails to bring about the transition from capitalism to communism that Marx thinks is necessary for realizing human individuality. Contemporary China clearly deserves praise for its role in overcoming economic poverty. Yet poverty due to the inability to develop as a full developed human being in a contemporary social context is not now and was not then decreasing, but at the time of this writing is even increasing. If that is correct, then it is unclear that Chinese Marxism is now or even earlier prior to the pandemic was on the road to successfully alleviating poverty, so it is unclear that Marxism was or is an appropriate model for Chinese development.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese Marxism
• economic poverty
• developmental poverty
• human development

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Notes

1 See, for discussion, Avineri (2019).

2 For his specific contribution, see Fogel (1987).

3 See, for recent helpful discussion, Changfu (2016).

4 See, for an informal account, Buruma (2019).

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Notes on contributors

Tom Rockmore

Tom Rockmore is Professor of Philosophy at Peking University. He has taught and or studied in the US, France, Germany, Canada and China. His interests run throughout the history of philosophy, with special interests in German idealism. He is especially interested in idealist constructivism. Rockmore has published extensively and a number of his books have been translated into other languages.